NSA whistleblowers to speak at WCU

WEST CHESTER — Two National Security Agency whistleblowers will visit West Chester University on Wednesday to speak about the ongoing debate over privacy rights with increased national security surveillance.

Bill Binney and Thomas Drake, both former NSA employees, will speak Wednesday at the Sykes Student Union Theater from noon to 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The two will participate in a moderated discussion called “Essential Voices for Accountability in the National Security Era.” The university said Binney and Drake will look at the challenges facing intelligence agency whistleblowers and discuss the collection of personal data. They will also look at the dangers associated with increasing power of a national security state, the university said.

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This isn’t the first time the pair have visited West Chester University. In January, they spoke to a WCU class to discuss the current state of privacy in the U.S. as part of a WCU seminar called “Traitors and Whistleblowers.”

On Wednesday the two will speak as part of the Government Accountability Project’s “American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability.” The group said it brings notable truth-tellers to universities across the country.

After Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA, leaked classified documents to the media, a debate on Fourth Amendment Rights and privacy have continued to be a mainstay in national news. Recently the Pulitzer Prize for public service was awarded to the Washington Post and The Guardian US for their reporting on Snowden’s disclosures of the NSA surveillance operations.

Binney is a former NSA crypto-mathematician who worked for the agency for almost 40 years, according to the university. He led a team of analysts to creating an information processing system called ThinThread that would analyze massive amounts of information while protecting Americans’ privacy.

According to the university, Binney began speaking out on the NSA after leadership ignored the ThinThread system in favor of Trailblazer, a more intrusive and expensive system that was eventually abandoned. He has spoken to Congress on mismanagement and waste of funds at the NSA. He resigned from the NSA in 2001 and has continued to speak out against the NSA’s domestic spying program.

Binney and his colleague J. Kirk Wiebe also first revealed the NSA’s massive domestic spying program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic communications without protections for U.S. citizens, according to the university.

Drake is a former senior executive at the NSA. He also began whistleblowing after the NSA chose Trailblazer over ThinThread. The university said that he blew the whistle on fraud, waste and abuse at the agency, the loss and cover-up of Sept. 11 intelligence and electronic mass surveillance and data-mining done by the NSA.

In April 2010, Drake was charged by the Department of Justice with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act, but the charges were dropped in 2011. Drake has won the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award and the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award.

According to the university, the West Chester tour stop is sponsored by GAP, the WCU College of Business & Public Affairs, the WCU departments of Criminal Justice, Political Science, Public Policy and Administration, Computer Science, Philosophy, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

The panel will be moderated by GAP National Security and Human Rights Counsel Kathleen McClellan. According to the university, McClellan supports whistleblowers, with a focus on torture, surveillance, excessive secrecy and political discrimination. She has represented whistleblowers from the NSA, CIA, FBI, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

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About the Author

Kendal Gapinski is the Daily Local News reporter covering events in the Whiteland and Uwchlan areas. She is a 2013 graduate from American University. Reach the author at kgapinski@dailylocal.com
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